Creator of “Dancing Jesus” music site hit with 32-month jail sentence

UK authorities show they'll keep giving out prison time for copyright crimes.

Two men in the United Kingdom have been sentenced to jail for operating "Dancing Jesus," a website with illegal links to music that was operational between 2006 and 2011.

The BBC reports that Kane Robinson, 26, of North Shields, was sentenced to 32 months. Richard Graham, a 22-year-old from Leicestershire, was sentenced to 21 months. At previous hearings, both men admitted they were guilty of the charge of illegal distribution of music.

The Dancing Jesus site had links to more than 250,000 music tracks over its lifespan, according to the British Phonographic Society (BPI). In 2010, the group launched an investigation of the men that also involved the City of London police and the UK Intellectual Property Office.

The US Department of Homeland Security even became involved, seizing the site's Dallas-based servers in 2011.

Robinson was the creator and operator of the site, while Graham was "a major contributor," according to the Leicester Mercury.

The BPI emphasized that much of the music featured on Dancing Jesus was made available before its official release.

"Piracy—particularly pre-release—can make or break an artist’s career and can determine whether a record label is able to invest in that crucial second or third album," said David Wood, director of BPI’s copyright protection unit, who spoke to the press following the sentencing. “In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use pirate sites that give nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

The site's Twitter feed, inactive since 2009, features the image of a Jesus bobblehead doll and the slogan "because we listen to music before you."

Piracy sites in the US have led to major civil lawsuits, but criminal copyright charges for distributing music are a rarity, with Kim Dotcom's Megaupload being a huge exception to that rule. In the UK, however, private copyright investigations can lead to criminal prosecutions and jail time, such as the four-year-sentence for Anton Vickerman, who created the illegal TV-linking site SurfTheChannel.

“In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available _where artists can publish themselves_ offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use any of the big labels that give little to nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

Because then they'd have to do the same to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and that means no more South Park lol

If you want to use reductio ad absurdum the Simpson's creator (Matt Groening) should be sent to jail for ripping off The Flintstones. But don't worry, the Flintstones was an animated rip-off of The Honeymooners so their creators (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera,if they weren't already dead) should be sent to jail too.

Start taking things too far and they tend to go totally out of control.

How does this compare to the idea of private industry using taxpayer funded prosecutors to enforce what should be civil matters not involving criminal sanctions? It seems to me that the world's richest businesses don't want the aggravation or cost of filing civil lawsuits, so they divert prosecution resources away from crimes with serious impact on citizens so they can punish those who would have been more rightly dealt with in civil proceedings.

“In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available _where artists can publish themselves_ offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use any of the big labels that give little to nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

and here i was going to quote TFA and say "right, because the record labels give SO much to the artists themselves..."

“In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available _where artists can publish themselves_ offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use any of the big labels that give little to nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

""Piracy—particularly pre-release—can make or break an artist’s career and can determine whether a record label is able to invest in that crucial second or third album," said David Wood, director of BPI’s copyright protection unit"

Is there any data to back this claim? I don't feel like piracy plays much role in this. If an artist is big enough to be having their music pirated they are probably already going to continue to have their music produced and distributed; if they're just starting out it's unlikely that anybody will be widely sharing their music in the first place.

""Piracy—particularly pre-release—can make or break an artist’s career and can determine whether a record label is able to invest in that crucial second or third album," said David Wood, director of BPI’s copyright protection unit"

Is there any data to back this claim? I don't feel like piracy plays much role in this. If an artist is big enough to be having their music pirated they are probably already going to continue to have their music produced and distributed; if they're just starting out it's unlikely that anybody will be widely sharing their music in the first place.

It's true: piracy can make a career. Not just in music. The original PlayStation is one of such examples.

How does this compare to the idea of private industry using taxpayer funded prosecutors to enforce what should be civil matters not involving criminal sanctions? It seems to me that the world's richest businesses don't want the aggravation or cost of filing civil lawsuits, so they divert prosecution resources away from crimes with serious impact on citizens so they can punish those who would have been more rightly dealt with in civil proceedings.

Who did most of the investigation? Oh yeah, City of London Police. What will you find in the City of London (which is actually a relatively tiny fraction of the city between the Tower of London and Holborn)? Businesses, because virtually no-one lives there (it has a resident population of only 7000). So basically the CLP is a police force for business rather than actual people.

""Piracy—particularly pre-release—can make or break an artist’s career and can determine whether a record label is able to invest in that crucial second or third album," said David Wood, director of BPI’s copyright protection unit"

Is there any data to back this claim? I don't feel like piracy plays much role in this. If an artist is big enough to be having their music pirated they are probably already going to continue to have their music produced and distributed; if they're just starting out it's unlikely that anybody will be widely sharing their music in the first place.

I will give them credit, it sounds much less like a blatant lie than most of their hyperbole

Because then they'd have to do the same to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and that means no more South Park lol

If you want to use reductio ad absurdum the Simpson's creator (Matt Groening) should be sent to jail for ripping off The Flintstones. But don't worry, the Flintstones was an animated rip-off of The Honeymooners so their creators (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera,if they weren't already dead) should be sent to jail too.

Start taking things too far and they tend to go totally out of control.

The figure in the picture is from the Simpsons, isn't it? If so, and if it was used without permission / compensation, then they (the dancing Jesus guys) violated copyright. The Flintstones didn't violate copyright of The Honeymooners.

“In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available _where artists can publish themselves_ offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use any of the big labels that give little to nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

Exactly. At this point there's really no excuse for signing away all your musical rights to some consumer-hostile label. These companies should have been forced out of business years ago. Instead, they are turning into the textbook definition of economic rent-seekers; entities that extract money from an economy while providing nothing, using only their incumbent market power to keep themselves relevant and keep the money flowing.

Because then they'd have to do the same to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and that means no more South Park lol

If you want to use reductio ad absurdum the Simpson's creator (Matt Groening) should be sent to jail for ripping off The Flintstones. But don't worry, the Flintstones was an animated rip-off of The Honeymooners so their creators (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera,if they weren't already dead) should be sent to jail too.

Start taking things too far and they tend to go totally out of control.

that was kind of the point of my response. On further review, I should have added a </s> to the end of it...

“In this day and age, with so many quality digital music services available _where artists can publish themselves_ offering access to millions of tracks through free and premium tiers, there is no good reason to use any of the big labels that give little to nothing back to artists and offer a sub-standard experience for consumers."

Exactly. At this point there's really no excuse for signing away all your musical rights to some consumer-hostile label. These companies should have been forced out of business years ago. Instead, they are turning into the textbook definition of economic rent-seekers; entities that extract money from an economy while providing nothing, using only their incumbent market power to keep themselves relevant and keep the money flowing.

I'll be the last one to say much positive about music labels but they do serve a purpose (albeit one that is less important these days). The fairly raw deal most artists get is that labels will front money for the recording and promotion of an album. Typically, the best you can hope for is that you break even and sales can pay off the amount spent on said production and promotion. The hope is that you're able to either continue building a name for yourself and making more money on music sales, touring, and merch to the point where you can make a profit. A small percentage will become lucrative acts.

Entertainment and show business has always been an unforgiving line of work. Except for a few very lucky and often (but not always) talented artists or performers, it's a lot of work for not a lot of money. The arts in general are often a labor of love or a hobby for this reason alone.

With popular music, there are literally tens of thousands of acts out there at any given time and the labels are like investors who try to identify potentially profitable artists, invest money to get them off the ground, and fund promotion to help "support" their investment. The shitty part is that they're basically just investors. All the really care about is return on investment, not long term potential or anything resembling art or creativity (excepting where it affects returns).

With the cost of production dropping quite a bit over the past decade, it's less necessary to have tens of thousands of dollars to record an album. Likewise, promotion is actually doable if you trade deep pockets for savvy self-promotion and grueling legwork. Still, if you want to compete with professional recordings by skilled engineers in top-dollar studios or stand out among acts with the backing of multi-million dollar PR departments it can be tough to compete with a label.

edit: meant to point out that this doesn't really have to matter. Loads of artists are rightly getting wise to the fact that it's better to self-promote, tour, and record cheap and make a decent living (or at least fund their passion) than to sign on with a bunch of vampires because it's the only way to try and be some music superstar.

When are they going to start calling the financial bailouts of 2008 Piracy? Several big UK firms were involved in that, such as the Royal Bank of Scotland. . .

in fact, you can find a lot of literature talking about how London's extremely lax rules on financial transactions that created a lot of the conditions for the crash of 2008. JP Morgan Chase Manhattan, a US Bank, had a UK branch - and that UK branch is where Credit Default Swaps and Synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligations were invented. The London branch of AIG provided 'insurance' on a huge amount of subprime mortgage securities and the Federal Reserve bailed out AIG 100 cents on the dollar on a huge amount of worthless contracts. If AIG hadn't had a London branch, where they could get away with so much questionable activity, perhaps the crisis would have been much smaller.

What the UK government did to Iceland's banking system circa 2008.... now that was pretty much a clear cut case of piracy. They flat out stole money from the people of Iceland by abusing the terrorism laws. When are any of those pirates going to jail?

Her Majesty's Courts Service at work. This is the same country that cannot find someone to run an inquiry into institutional covering up of child abuse because there is nobody considered "senior" enough who didn't know some of the people accused of turning a blind eye, or worse, socially in the 80s or 90s. But throwing some schmuck from a poor part of the north into a deep dark hole for years for linking to unlicensed music - that's easy.

I'm really curious why they make a civil matter a criminal one. Similar to the Pirate Bay, they could sue for massive amounts of money and that would make sense, however a prison sentence does not. Especially one that equates to a felony given the jail time.

Because then they'd have to do the same to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and that means no more South Park lol

If you want to use reductio ad absurdum the Simpson's creator (Matt Groening) should be sent to jail for ripping off The Flintstones. But don't worry, the Flintstones was an animated rip-off of The Honeymooners so their creators (William Hanna and Joseph Barbera,if they weren't already dead) should be sent to jail too.

Start taking things too far and they tend to go totally out of control.

Not to mention if anything they should be referring to Family Guy over South Park. South Park is not even similar in feel, approach or style to the Simpsons anyway. Love both of them however

How does this compare to the idea of private industry using taxpayer funded prosecutors to enforce what should be civil matters not involving criminal sanctions? It seems to me that the world's richest businesses don't want the aggravation or cost of filing civil lawsuits, so they divert prosecution resources away from crimes with serious impact on citizens so they can punish those who would have been more rightly dealt with in civil proceedings.

Keep that in mind the next time you vote and look who's sponsored who.

"Let me tell you something, pendejo. You pull any your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I'll take it away from you and stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger till it goes "click".